


While Masked In Besterssome And Gold

by Nununununu



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: (not main pairing), Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Auguste (Captive Prince) Lives, Conflict, Don't copy to another site, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Essentially canon universe but with mages, Fade to Black, Getting Together, Hook-Up, M/M, Masked ball, Witchcraft, inadvisable sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:07:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23547388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nununununu/pseuds/Nununununu
Summary: Like everything in this unbearable country, the ball was ostentatious and ridiculous.Forced to attend a Veretian celebration by his father, Damen meets a young fair-haired mage.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 102
Collections: Robot Rainbow 2020





	While Masked In Besterssome And Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HandmaidenOfHorror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/gifts).



> Laurent's age is left up to the reader's preference (can be read as aged-up).

Like everything in this unbearable country, the ball was ostentatious and ridiculous.

Damen, attending reluctantly as the royal representative of Akielos as ordered by his father – to ‘learn the weaknesses of Vere’ – adjusted the mask sourly over his face and thought longingly of the sword he had been forced to leave behind. Even more sour was the fact – had he been able to wrangle it – he could be going a few rounds right now with Vere’s brightest star, the golden mage and warrior, the Crown Prince Auguste.

_That_ at least had the promise of being a reasonable bout. A gaggle of gaudily decked slender-limbed creatures Veretians’ called _pets_ had earlier put on a display of mock fighting in the circular ring used for entertainment at the centre of the glittering, gilt-laden hall Damen was currently brooding in, the pretence at a ‘battle’ so painfully dreadful Damen had come close to pushing his way out of the room in disgust.

That the ‘battle’ had descended into the pets fucking each other had come as more of a surprise than it should have done. Damen had heard the rumours about Veretians – everyone surely had. All buttoned up tight in their fluttery excesses of fabric, only to rut in public in a way that spoke of a complete absence of restraint as well as shame.

Not that Damen had ever had felt any shame when indulging in sex. But seeing a noblewoman being fondled by a pet here – both masked, but the sheer abundance of jewellery bestowed on the latter made the difference in rank obvious – and a rotund elderly man leading his much younger partner around by a fine leash passed through the rings piercing the youth’s nipples, while both gazed hungrily at other people through the eyeholes of their masks –

Well, it made Damen miss his slaves terribly – the quiet perfection of their training and the lack of _fuss_. Vere was an attack on the senses generally and this ball was the worst of it yet.

“Dreadful, isn’t it,” A cool voice remarked his elbow, and Damen stiffened in surprise, wondering if he could pretend ignorance given the general hubbub and depart as if he hadn’t heard. A curl of pale hair caught his attention in his peripheral vision, though, and his head turned almost without him willing it.

The masked young man leaning with one shoulder propped against the wall next to him was –

Not as Damen had expected. Laced up in dark colours that only emphasised his fair colouring along with his status as high-level mage – as Veretians reckoned it – the stranger wore a surprisingly simple mask of deep green besterssome edged with gold. His silken hair was pulled back except for the lock that had strayed out, the flaxen strands falling down towards a mouth that would be pretty were it not pressed thin as if concealing a scowl.

“That’s what you’re thinking,” the young mage continued. For all his posture was laconic, his fingers were slightly white with tension at the tips when he folded his arms, “I suppose you’re thoroughly resenting the hardship that comes with drinking our wine and eating our meats when you could be smashing heads.”

He paused as if deliberating, although Damen was certain it was for effect.

“That _is_ what you Akelions do when you’re not killing people, isn’t it,” So this young mage recognised him then. Given Damen’s height and colouring and inability to hide the extent of his disgust at the indulgences on-going around him, it wasn’t a great feat. The mage’s fair blue eyes were like ice, “Smash heads?”

He wasn’t going to be goaded. Damen had promised his father this – even if he had complained at length at the very idea of attending the celebration under what were essentially false pretences.

Auguste had the wrong idea, however. If Vere were truly seeking to open channels in which to discuss peace with Akielos – which would never happen – _this_ was definitely not how they should go about it. 

“If I were to smash a man’s head, he would be dead,” Damen was also tempted to inform the young mage that, in Akelios, the ability to do witchcraft wasn’t lauded and venerated like it was in Vere, and that sorcerers tended to find themselves minus a limb if they practiced their craft openly or, in cases of the more vile forms of witchery, lost their head.

“Barbarian,” The young mage’s sneer did nothing to conceal the indicators of beauty hinted at by the sculpted lines of his face not hidden by his mask. Down in the ring, one of the pets squealed, impaled by a toy another held.

His gaze flicking back to the newcomer, Damen saw some quickly repressed emotion pass briefly over the young mage’s face. He turned to Damen.

“Let’s go.”

Damen stared at him.

“Are you short of hearing or simply unable to process speech so high up from the ground?” Those chilly blue eyes narrowed at him, “I’m leaving. You look like you wish to be anywhere else other than here. You will accompany me and thus provide entertainment.”

“I will not –” Damen started.

“Young mage!” A voice boomed over the crowd – a bearded man in a great bejewelled mask was bearing down on them, bringing with him a brown-haired pet so decked out in mage-wrought finery it almost hid the fact he looked barely more than a child, “What is such a fine looking creature as yourself doing lurking at the back with this –”

His gaze briefly flittered over Damen in an apparent search for words, while the pet curled his lip at them both.

“I was under the impression all were strangers here while masked,” If anything, the mage’s voice gained an additional layer of ice. He gestured shortly towards Damen, “This guest has just asked me to show him the delights of the palace, such as they may be.”

There was a predictable hint of tension on the word 'guest'.

“Why,” The large, bearded man – the Regent, holder of the throne until Auguste was crowned in the next month – looked crossly thwarted beneath his mask for a moment, before he clapped the young mage on the shoulder with potentially false cheer, “I shall look forward to getting better acquainted with you then, _stranger_ , when you return from your – tour.”

The young mage stood motionlessly as the much larger man’s thumb traced over the vulnerable arch of his clavicle, his lack of reaction so pointed it was a negation all in itself.

“You are both disgusting,” the child informed them, before slipping off after the departing Regent with a toss of his hair, “I can’t decide which of you I despise more.”

“I thought we were all strangers here,” Damen remarked without intending to once it was again just himself and the young mage in this spot they seemed to have made for themselves in the crowded hall.

“As though anyone could mistake you for a Veretian,” was the mage’s distinctly disdainful response –

_Laurent’s_ response, the famed younger brother of the Crown Prince, so valued amongst Veretians for his guile and witchcraft that Damen’s father had taken care to warn Damen about him specifically.

_Be on your guard,_ the King of Akelios had gripped his son’s hand, _The devil may wear a pretty face, but he is layer upon layer of poison around a barren stone._

The lithe body of the younger prince looked the entire opposite of barren to Damen’s assessing gaze, for all Laurent’s slender limbs were wrapped in countless swathes of material under all the embroidery.

“The idea of a ‘tour’ was not intended as a euphemism, for all my uncle decided to interpret it as such,” His tone waspish, Laurent shifted marginally, a tensing of his muscles that was undoubtedly intended to go unnoticed.

Over in the ring a new set of ‘entertainers’ had begun wailing as one assaulted the other for points awarded by the crowd. From elsewhere in the sprawling network of buildings that made up the palace, music could be heard starting up afresh as those who wanted to no doubt gathered for another dance.

Damen could only suppose there was a plethora of indiscretions going on there as well.

“I have heard that Veretians have fine horses,” he offered slowly, for he could attempt to be diplomatic if obliged and anything would be better than this, “Perhaps a tour could go via the stables.”

“So you can make off with one? I think not,” Laurent had already started to walk away.

He paused to glance back though, when Damen had thought he would not, and there was something almost unguarded about the younger man for a second. Catching up with him, they stepped together out of the constant excesses of the hall and into the dark.

“It was not my idea or desire to come here,” Damen found himself admitting after a while as such.

“It was neither my brother’s idea to request your presence of Akelios nor have the ball,” Laurent returned after a long, considering pause, “You may have noticed he has been absent throughout.”

Indeed, Damen had, “Called away by necessity to a war council?”

He had, perhaps, used this excuse himself to escape from unwanted obligations a time or two in the past.

Laurent minimally shrugged – an agreement in essence, “He will make an appearance later.”

Whereas the younger brother’s presence had presumably been required from the start.

They walked again without speaking for a short time longer. Out here, in the relative quiet between the areas of brilliantly lit indoor revelry, everything seemed different. The shadows playing across Laurent’s face along with the mask made Damen consider that, maybe, they could pretend they truly were strangers.

He didn’t know Laurent, after all – only his reputation. And Laurent didn’t know him, even if the young mage might think he did.

“Are the rumours true,” Damen found himself asking, knowing he risked ruining his supposed role in this farce of a celebration; not knowing fully why he said it, except perhaps in the hope of gaining a glimpse of something honest beyond the other prince’s rigorous control, “That Laurent of Vere never fucks?”

“As true as the rumours are that the Barbarian Prince of Akelios only fucks women,” Laurent agreed, and pushed Damen against a building by placing his hand on the taller man’s chest and walking him backwards like that, “And that it is all he is good for and all he ever does.”

“Aside from smashing heads,” Damen allowed himself to move backwards, just as he allowed Laurent to retain his hand.

It would be madness. Madness to consider setting his own hands on Laurent; to pull him in closer and take hold of his hip and his mouth –

But Damen wasn’t prince of Akelios at the moment, was he, after all. Just as Laurent wasn’t anything more than a troubled young mage. 

And it _wasn’t_ true. Damen didn’t only fuck women.

And the younger brother of the Crown Prince, as it turned out, _did_ fuck – and did it brilliantly.


End file.
